Brooke was the last Republican Senator elected from Massachusetts until Scott Brown was elected in 2010. At his death in 2015, Brooke was the oldest living former Senator.
Edward Brooke, a former U.S. senator from Massachusetts and the first African-American elected by popular vote to the chamber, died Saturday. He was 95.
Brooke's death was confirmed by a family spokesman, who said he died surrounded by family at his home in the southern state of Florida.
A liberal Republican, Brooke won his Senate seat in 1966 and was re-elected in 1972. He was one of only two African-Americans to serve in the Senate in the 20th century, and the first since the end of the American Civil War, when state legislatures appointed senators.
President Barack Obama, in a statement, praised Brooke for "an extraordinary life of public service." He also hailed Brooke's pragmatic approach to lawmaking and said he stood "at the forefront of the battle for civil rights and economic fairness."
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, a former Massachusetts senator, also issued a statement, calling Brooke a "strong public servant."
Kerry added, "Whether in the Army infantry during World War II, where he was awarded the Bronze Star fighting fascism; or as state attorney general, battling corruption; or, finally, as a United States senator, helping to pass landmark civil rights legislation and pushing for affordable housing, Ed Brooke gave to his country every day of his life."
Brooke was widely seen as a centrist, during an era when Congress was noticeably less partisan than it is now. He was among the first U.S. lawmakers to call on former President Richard Nixon to resign in 1974, as the scandal known as Watergate gripped the nation. He also opposed two Nixon nominees to the U.S. Supreme Court over civil rights issues.
Observers widely viewed Brooke as a consensus builder who backed fair housing legislation and improved ties with China.
He lost his bid for a third term in 1978 to Democrat Paul Tsongas, as details of a bitter divorce drew the attention of the national press corps. The controversy led Brooke to admit that he'd made a false statement under oath during a court deposition.
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MASSACHUSETTS: Politicians from both sides of the aisle mourned the death on Saturday of "trailblazer" Edward Brooke, the first popularly elected black US senator. He was 95.
Brooke, who represented Massachusetts from 1967-1979 in the US Senate, championed laws to benefit the disadvantaged during his two terms.
President Barack Obama hailed his "extraordinary life of public service."
"Ed Brooke stood at the forefront of the battle for civil rights and economic fairness," said Obama, America's first African American president in a statement.
"During his time in elected office, he sought to build consensus and understanding across partisan lines, always working towards practical solutions to our nation's challenges."
The Massachusetts Republican Party praised the "decorated war hero" as a "highly respected legislator responsible for shaping our nation's laws and ensuring equal rights for all men and women."
Born on Oct.26, 1919, Brooke served in the US Army during World War II, fighting in Italy as part of the all-black 366th Infantry Regiment and earning a Bronze Star.
A liberal Republican who grew up in racially divided Washington, Brooke served in the 100-seat US Senate for two terms.
Before Brooke, other African Americans had served in the Senate but they were chosen by state legislatures rather than elected by popular vote.
During a ceremony awarding Brooke the highest civilian award in the US in 2009, Obama said he had "followed the trail" Brooke had blazed through the segregated United States.
Brooke was also awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and has received honorary degrees from more than 30 colleges and universities.
Brooke studied at Howard University in Washington and practiced law.
Before joining the Senate, he was the attorney general for Massachusetts. He was the first black person to hold a state attorney general post in the US.
"Senator Brooke's accomplishments remind us that anything is possible in our country," said Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell.
Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus also paid tribute to a man he called a "pioneer and an inspiration to many" through his life story and relentless commitment to public service.
Secretary of State John Kerry, a former Democratic senator, agreed.
"Ed Brooke: trailblazer, gentleman, public servant personified. Guts and integrity. God bless," he wrote on Twitter.
After Brooke, Democrat Carol Moseley Braun was elected and served in the 1990s as the second African American US Senator. Obama was the third ever elected African American member of the Senate.
Following Obama, black senators Cory Booker, a Democrat, and Republican Tim Scott also won elections to the nation's highest legislative body.
Booker was elected to the chamber in 2013. After being appointed to the post in 2013, Scott won a special election to hold his seat in 2014.
A "deeply saddened" Scott took to Twitter to say that Brooke "was a true trailblazer; those of us who followed cannot thank him enough."
Former congressman Allen West said Brooke was a "fine role model and vanguard."
Brooke is survived by his wife Anne, children Remi, Edwina, Edward, and stepdaughter Melanie, along with four grandchildren.
In September 2002, he was diagnosed with breast cancer, and subsequently underwent a double mastectomy. He later spoke publicly about a disease that many men are not aware of.
Edward W. Brooke III, who in 1966 became the first African-American elected to the United States Senate by popular vote, winning as a Republican in overwhelmingly Democratic Massachusetts, died on Saturday at his home in Coral Gables, Fla. He was 95.
Ralph Neas, a family spokesman, confirmed the death.
Mr. Brooke won his Senate seat by nearly a half-million votes in 1966 and was re-elected in 1972. A skilled coalition builder at a time when Congress was less ideologically divided than it is today, Mr. Brooke shunned labels, but he was seen as a centrist. His positions and votes were consistently more liberal than those of his increasingly conservative Republican colleagues.
He opposed the expansion of nuclear arsenals, pushed for improved relations with China and championed civil rights, the legalization of abortion and fair housing policies. He urged Republicans to match the Democrats in coming up with programs to aid cities and the poor.
“Where are our plans for a New Deal or a Great Society?” he asked in a 1966 book, “The Challenge of Change: Crisis in Our Two-Party System.”
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Edward W. Brooke III.CreditJonathan Ernst/Getty Images
He was a thorn in the side of his party’s leader, President Richard M. Nixon. He successfully led the fight against two Nixon Supreme Court nominees whose positions on civil rights were called into question. When Nixon became entangled in the Watergate scandal, Mr. Brooke called for the appointment of a special prosecutor. He was the first Republican senator to demand Nixon’s resignation.
“His presence in the Senate in those years was absolutely indispensable,” said Mr. Neas, who was chief legislative assistant to Mr. Brooke and later president of the liberal advocacy group People for the American Way. “There were repeated battles during those years. Even some Democrats were retreating on the Senate floor on issues like school desegregation and abortion rights, and Senator Brooke was the one who often single-handedly took on the radical right.”
Still, he disappointed liberals by opposing a program to recruit teachers to work in disadvantaged areas. He sought to deny federal aid to New York City during its financial crisis and resisted changing Senate rules to make filibusters against civil rights legislation easier to stop.
On the issue of the Vietnam War, Mr. Brooke, a decorated combat veteran, was torn, moving from dove to hawk, then back to dove. He was a forceful speaker, often described as gentlemanly and charming, and meticulous about his appearance, sometimes changing clothes three times a day.
His political career began collapsing in 1978. What Mr. Brooke thought would be an amicable divorce from his first wife, the former Remigia Ferrari-Scacco, turned bitter and was played out in the news media, resulting in an admission by Mr. Brooke that he had made a false statement under oath in a deposition.
He lost his bid for a third term to Representative Paul E. Tsongas, a Democrat, who received 55 percent of the vote. Mr. Brooke described the experience as “the lowest point in my life.”
Cleared by the Senate Ethics Committee four months later, he was nevertheless devastated. “Why did it happen?” he said in an interview with The Boston Globe in 2000. “I don’t know. I’ve asked my God that many times. ‘Why, why, why, dear God?’ ”
Mr. Brooke was twice elected attorney general of Massachusetts, the first African-American to be elected attorney general of any state. When President John F. Kennedy heard the news in 1962, on the same day that his brother Edward was elected to the United States Senate, he said, “That’s the biggest news in the country.”
In 1964, as President Lyndon B. Johnson led a Democratic landslide, Mr. Brooke was re-elected attorney general by more votes than any other Republican in the nation. In 1968, he was at the top of many lists of possible Republican vice-presidential candidates. By his own and others’ accounts, he turned down cabinet posts and a seat on the Supreme Court.
The only previous black senators, Blanche K. Bruce and Hiram R. Revels, both Republicans, were elected not by voters but by the Mississippi Legislature in the 1870s.
Mr. Brooke never presented himself as a black politician and grew tired of being called “first this, first that,” he said. He represented all the people of Massachusetts, he said, and wanted no part of being “a national leader for the Negro people.”
Edward William Brooke III was born on Oct. 26, 1919, in Washington. He was the third child and only son of the former Helen Seldon and Edward W. Brooke II, a lawyer for the Veterans Administration and a Republican, as most blacks were then.
He grew up in “a cocoon,” he wrote in his autobiography, “Bridging the Divide: My Life” (2007). He had a stable home, firm religious guidance — he was an Episcopal altar boy — and a good education, attending Dunbar High School, a prestigious black school in Washington.
Surrounded by middle-class blacks, he wrote, he rarely encountered direct racial discrimination, although when the Washington opera was closed to blacks his mother took him to the Metropolitan Opera in New York.
Mr. Brooke earned a bachelor’s degree in sociology from Howard University in 1941. A reservist during college, he was commissioned as a second lieutenant after Pearl Harbor in 1941 and joined the all-black 366th Combat Infantry Regiment.
The regiment was assigned to guard duty in Italy; combat was reserved for whites. “An insult to our dignity,” Mr. Brooke wrote. Put in charge of special events, he brought opera and the heavyweight boxing champion Joe Louis to his troops.
After black troops were allowed to serve in combat, Mr. Brooke became a scout assigned to go behind enemy lines to aid Italian partisans. He rose to captain and received the Bronze Star and the Combat Infantryman Badge. But the sting of segregation in the armed forces left him eager to leave the Army. “In some respects,” he said in an interview, “the German prisoners of war fared better than Negro soldiers.”
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President Obama with Mr. Brooke when he received a Congressional Gold Medal in 2009.CreditGerald Herbert/Associated Press
After his discharge, Mr. Brooke enrolled at Boston University School of Law, where he became an editor of the Law Review. He also corresponded with Ms. Ferrari-Scacco, an Italian woman he had met during the war, and she came to Boston. They married in 1947.
A year after Mr. Brooke began practicing law in the predominantly black Roxbury section of Boston, he returned to Boston University to earn a master’s degree in law.
In 1950, persuaded by friends, he ran for state representative in both the Democratic and Republican primaries, as was legal then. He won the Republican nomination but was buried in a Democratic landslide in the general election. He ran and lost again in 1952.
In 1960, Mr. Brooke won the Republican nomination for Massachusetts secretary of state, becoming the first black to be nominated for statewide office in Massachusetts. He was defeated by the Democrat, Kevin H. White, whose campaign issued a bumper sticker saying, “Vote White.”
The new governor, John Volpe, a Republican, appointed Mr. Brooke chairman of the Boston Finance Commission. He turned what had been an ineffectual post into a crusading one, uncovering a scandal involving the illegal disposal of public land.
Two years later, in 1962, Mr. Brooke won the Republican nomination for attorney general by a razor-thin margin over Elliot L. Richardson, a future attorney general of the United States. In the general election, the campaign of his Democratic opponent, Francis E. Kelly, hired blacks to drive through white suburbs yelling that they planned to move in as soon as Mr. Brooke won.
Mr. Brooke was the only statewide Republican winner.
In 1963, Mr. Brooke fought civil rights groups that were calling on students to boycott school to protest segregation in Boston. He said it was his job to enforce state laws, which required children to go to school.
In 1964, Mr. Brooke refused to support the Republican presidential nominee, Barry M. Goldwater, or to be photographed with him. Mr. Brooke said he was serving not just his conscience but also the best interests of the party, which he believed should be more liberal.
Massachusetts voters were hardly put off by his liberal views: In 1966, he handily defeated his Democratic opponent in the Senate race, former Gov. Endicott Peabody.
On the opening day of Congress in 1967, Edward M. Kennedy, Massachusetts’ senior senator, escorted Mr. Brooke down the Senate’s center aisle to a standing ovation. When Mr. Brooke got his first haircut on Capitol Hill, he integrated the Senate barbershop.
After losing to Mr. Tsongas, Mr. Brooke resumed private law practice in Washington and became chairman emeritus of the National Low Income Housing Coalition. In 1988, he was investigated for using his influence to win a client millions of dollars in federal subsidies for rehabilitation of low-income housing. An aide pleaded guilty to charges in the case, but Mr. Brooke was eventually cleared of any wrongdoing.
Mr. Brooke was divorced from his first wife, Remigia, in 1979. She died in 1994.
He is survived by their daughters, Remi Cynthia Brooke Goldstone and Edwina Helene Brooke Petit, and four grandchildren. Mr. Brooke married Anne Fleming in 1979, and she survives him, as does their son, Edward. In May 2008, the television newswoman Barbara Walters revealed in a memoir that she and Mr. Brooke had begun a clandestine romance in 1973. After telling him in a letter that she would divulge the affair in her book, he wrote back “a very nice note,” Ms. Walters said.
In 2004, Mr. Brooke was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President George W. Bush, whose administration he frequently criticized over the war in Iraq, the antiterrorism legislation called the USA Patriot Act, and its opposition to same-sex marriage.
In September 2002, Mr. Brooke learned that he had breast cancer, a diagnosis that about 1,500 American men receive every year. After a double mastectomy, he was declared cancer free. He then spoke out to warn men — particularly black men, who are statistically more susceptible — about the danger of breast cancer.
Although Mr. Brooke had sought to de-emphasize his race, he remained concerned about racial progress.
“My fervent expectation,” he wrote in his autobiography, “is that sooner rather than later, the United States Senate will more closely reflect the rich diversity of this great country.”
Correction: January 4, 2015
Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this obituary erroneously attributed a distinction to Mr. Brooke. He was the first black senator to be returned to office, not the only one. Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey was returned to office last year.
PANAMA CITY, Fla. (AP) — Renowned jazz clarinetist Buddy DeFranco, who led the way on his instrument in the transition between the swing and bebop eras, has died at the age of 91, his family said Friday. -
Born in 1923 in Camden, N.J., DeFranco was raised in South Philadelphia and began playing the clarinet at age 9. By age 14, he had won a national Tommy Dorsey Swing contest and began his road career in 1939.
Icon of Arab music Sabah dies in Lebanon
;;; Born Jeanette Gergi Feghali on November 10, 1927, she later took the screen name Sabah (Morning in Arabic) but was affectionately known by the diminutive Sabbuha, or the nickname Shahrura (songbird). She began performing in the 1940s, earning a reputation for her renditions of patriotic songs as well as folkloric ballads, though it was her light-hearted style that endeared her to fans. She was also an icon of the big screen, launching her career in Egypt, the centre of the Arab film industry, and appearing in more than 90 movies, including her first "The Heart Has One". She starred alongside many Egyptian heart throbs, including Rushdi Abaza, one of several men she would marry. Sabah, who also performed on the stage and on television, will be remembered almost as much for a tumultuous love life that at times threatened to overshadow her reputation as a performer.
- Multiple marriages -
She is believed to have tied the knot at least nine times, though the precise figure has been disputed, ensuring that her private life was perpetually in the headlines. Her first marriage, in 1946, was to Najib Shammas, who fathered her son, Sabah. Her daughter Huwaida was born from her union with Egyptian violinist Anwar Mansy. Her other husbands included Egyptian television presenter Ahmad Faraj and Lebanese member of parliament Yusef Hammoud. Her marriage to Abaza lasted just days, but the longest of her unions, clocking in at 17 years, was to Lebanese artist Fadi Lebnan. She continued to shock fans with her dalliances well into her later years, getting engaged briefly in 2003 to a Mr. Lebanon winner several decades her junior. In interviews, Sabah bluntly acknowledged she was unfaithful to most of her husbands, who she claimed were cheating on her. She also feared that many of her husbands tried to take advantage of her fame and wealth. She was so generous with loved ones that those close to her nicknamed her "Madame Bank". Sabah clung to the glamorous style of her youth well into her 80s, continuing to wear her hair long and blonde and undergoing multiple plastic surgeries. Her longevity and bid for youth became the subject of lighthearted jest among the Lebanese, though in interviews Sabah said she found such comments offensive. Her fame also extended far beyond the borders of Lebanon, and she performed at grand international venues including the Sydney Opera House and the Albert Hall in Britain. She held Egyptian, Jordanian and US citizenship as well as Lebanese, and was close to several Arab leaders, counting the family of Jordan's late King Hussein as friends. Lebanon's Information Minister Ramzi Jreij promised Wednesday that Sabah's funeral, set for Sunday in central Beirut, would befit her status as a national icon. Large crowds are expected to pay their respects during several days of mourning before the singer is buried in her home village of Bdadun outside Beirut. Tributes for the diva poured in from artists and politicians alike. "With her passing away an entire beautiful past of Lebanon passes away," Lebanese politician Walid Jumblatt wrote on Twitter. "She was a great singer of a Lebanon that my generation knew, that will never come back." Several Lebanese pop stars changed their Twitter profile pictures to feature photos of the young Sabah, including starlet Haifa Wehbe. "God bless you, our Sabuha. God willing you are in a more beautiful place," Wehbe tweeted. Lebanese pop star Nancy Ajram said Lebanon "has lost a legend." "Sabah has gone, but she lives on in our hearts."
Walter Caldon, of New York, NY died on Saturday, November 22. He was 92 years old and lived near Lincoln Center. After a brief illness he died peacefully in hospice at Mt. Sinai hospital in Manhattan after sustaining a head injury in a fall at the hospital. Mr. Caldon was born in Staten Island, NY. His parents, Ida Dissen(a), born in Vitebsk, and Samuel Kaldovsky, born in Kiev, emigrated to the U.S. in the first years of the 20th century. He was the youngest of three children that included the late Ruth Levine (1907-1973) and Frances Gold (1916-2000). He is survived by his sisters' children, grandchildren and great- grandchildren. Before the war, Mr. Caldon studied at Brooklyn College and The Art Students League. He then served in the U.S. Army from 1942-1946. In recognition of his academic potential, he was selected to complete a program in Civil Engineering at Rutgers University in 1943-44 under U.S. Army sponsorship. After the war, he completed a B.S. and M.A. in Fine Arts with a minor in Music at Columbia University and subsequently a Diplome at the Ecole Normale de Musique in Paris where he studied under composer Artur Honegger. From 1952-1973, he worked as a Civil Engineer for the New York City Housing Authority. He worked on high-rise construction during a period of great postwar expansion of the Authority. Mr. Caldon lived for over 50 years in a townhouse in Greenwich Village. After he stopped working, he also spent time at a weekend home in Southold, NY. His lengthy retirement included several extended stays in his beloved Paris as well as composing music for performing arts productions and painting. He wrote musical scores for the Living Theater, the Open Theater, The Martha Graham Dance Company and The Actors Studio among others. His paintings were featured in American Artist in August 1975 and in one-man gallery shows in Paris and New York. His work is represented in corporate and private collections in New York, Germany and France. Many of the paintings depict urban scenes, often evoking a sense of the sublime or mysterious in otherwise familiar surroundings. There would be many piquant episodes to relate. In the early 1970s, Mr. Caldon was known to leash- walk his pet capuchin monkey around the Village in diapers. As if that weren't enough, he also enjoyed smuggling the monkey into the movies inside his shirt where she would sleep blissfully until the credits rolled. One week something alarmed the monkey and she went free-range in a crowded Manhattan movie house during the second reel. The rest of the story is perhaps best left to the imagination. He was fiercely independent until the end of his life. He was grateful for the help of friends but he often confounded them by not accepting even the most basic services that make life here less arduous. On the day of his fall, he rode two buses to the hospital when he could have easily paid for the cab ride across town. He was an intense, witty friend whose sense of humor and wonderment at simple details that most of us fail to notice are missed by those fortunate enough to have known him. You could have fun in even the most dismal surroundings if you could only catch his eye. The flaws in our English and French syntax shall hereafter go uncorrected. There will be a Memorial at a future date. -
COSTIGLlO--Lawrence U., 98. Died on November 25, 2014. Beloved husband of Isabelle (nee Mahoney), who pre-deceased him. Father of Christina Bernard (Edward), Peter (Barbara), Eugene, Teresa Cantwell (Thomas). Grandfather of nine and great- grandfather of eight. A WW II veteran and a 1941 graduate of Fordham Law School. He worked for many years as Executive Vice President for the Savings Banks Association of New York. He later was a director of the Federal Housing Finance Board. Reposing at Frank E. Campbell, Friday, November 28, 2-5 and 7-9pm. Mass of Christian Burial at St. Ignatius Loyola Church, 980 Park Avenue, New York at 10am, Saturday, November 29.
FISHER--Olga Stone, born June 4, 1919, died November 21, 2014, age 95. Daughter of Joseph P. Bader and Erma Bartos Bader. She was a lifelong resident of New York City and graduated from NYU and the NYU School of Social Work. She had a long and rewarding career as a social worker, working at the Louise Wise Agency and at the Lenox Hill Hospital, retiring in 1994. After retirement, she volunteered as a bereavement counselor. The widow of Bertram M. Stone, Ms. Fisher is survived by her children, Jeffrey B. Stone (Gail A. Weiss) and Margaret S. Brodsky (Richard E. Brodsky). She also leaves three devoted grandchildren: Emily C. Stone, Jane S. Brodsky (M. Jesse Carlson) and Benjamin H. Brodsky (Ilana Brodsky), and a great grandchild, Orly S. Carlson. She also leaves her brother, Robert E. Bader, his wife, Helen K. Bader, and Diane L. Stone, mother -
SPILKE--Marilyn (nee Lesnik), 91, on November 22, 2014. A woman of courage, wit, honesty, kindness, and impeccable taste. She was the widow of Saul Spilke with whom she shared a life for almost 50 years. She will always be in the hearts of her surviving children, Kenneth and Sandy, (her beloved daughter, Karen predeceased her), her grandchildren, Ezra, Irene, George, Sam, Alex, and Emily, and her close friends. May her memory be a blessing. Funeral Service 10am, Friday Edwards-Dowdle Funeral Home, Dobbs Ferry, NY. Edwardsanddowdle.com -
See more at: http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/nytimes/obituary.aspx?n=marilyn-spilke&pid=173283984&fhid=2248#sthash.riYTgHZn.dpuf
Marion Knott at her family's Knott's Berry Farm theme park in Buena Park in March 1980.
arion Knott Montapert, the only member of the Knott family born on the Orange County berry farm that grew into one of Southern California’s signature attractions, has died at her Newport Beach home. She was 92 and the last surviving child of Walter and Cordelia Knott.
Montapert’s Nov. 13 death was confirmed by Knott’s Berry Farm.
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